Beyond Hypothermia (1996)
Spoiler free summary: The story of a literally cold female assassin who falls in love with a noodle vendor as her professional life becomes dangerously complicated. The compelling lead performers, fatalistic romance, and stylish direction that extends beyond the small number of action scenes help this stand out from other Hong Kong action flicks and make it worth watching.
Beyond Hypothermia is a 1996 action/romantic drama from director Patrick Leung. It was co-produced by Johnnie To (Breaking News), the first film shot under his Milkyway Image production company, and I could see his fingerprints in the few stylized but grounded action beats. This was on my watchlist but moved to the top thanks to the Fridays of Fury Action Club . In a weird bit of synchronicity it has a VERY similar premise to my random Naro Video library pick earlier in the week, Bullets of Love. I would have enjoyed Beyond Hypothermia regardless, but I think I appreciated it even more seeing all the ways it excels and succeeds where Bullets of Love completely missed the mark.
It grabbed me from the opening shot, a bloody hand reaching for a loose bullet on the road. An injured man (Han Jae-Suk) loads it into his gun as cars smash into each other in the distance. It takes a while before we see the character from this flash forward again. After the credits, we are introduced to our protagonist, a nameless female assassin (Jacklyn Wu) in an ice-filled warehouse. She sledgehammers a rifle out of a block of ice and sets herself up in a sniper position. Enough time passes that her unmoving body has a layer of frost once her target finally appears. I immediately took note of how considered and stylish even the little procedural shots were as she set herself up in the warehouse, culminating in her bullet casing popping out onto one of the ice blocks and melting into it before she retrieves it.
After the job she returns to her apartment and we see her life/security routine. Her narration explains that she was raised from childhood to be an assassin. Her only contact is with an older woman who is her handler and the widow of the criminal who adopted her. The handler explains that our protagonist was born with a rare condition that makes her body 5 degrees colder than normal (hence the movie’s title and her comfort in the icy warehouse). The handler provides her with identities that only last as long as each job. The assassin has no other friends or family, and she says she feels no emotions, even when she kills. Until recently, that is, as she has begun watching a local noodle vendor from a distance who makes something stir inside her.
Against her better judgment, she visits him one night as he is closing. Long Shek (Sean Lau, Black Mask) makes her a bowl of his special noodles, and she drinks the boiling hot soup to enjoy the feeling, any kind of feeling, of the burning in her throat. She disappears without a word, Long Shek calling her a “beautiful ghost.” She becomes “addicted” to eating at Long Shek’s after every assassination job. For his part, he seems to spend every night waiting and hoping for her to show up (poor guy is probably staying open late every night!). Long Shek tells her he used to be a Triad gang member, but quit to run his noodle shop. He grew up poor, and when his single mom had a little money they would have noodles, so they are the most important thing to him. He tries to connect with her, even trying to interpret random one word answers. One time she leaves him saying nothing but “swing,” and on their next meeting he leads her up to a rooftop swing set.
On one of her jobs, the target has their little girl with them. It seems like she is waiting for a clear shot as the target puts the child in the car, then she goes up and blasts the man and his guards. There is a sick as hell shot of blood splattering on the girl’s dropped cotton candy and dissolving it, then her father’s body drops beside it.
She looks into the car and seems to hesitate. We think maybe those flickering embers of feeling starting inside her will stop her. They don’t, she shoots the little girl. Later as she tries to connect more with Long Shek, she even takes this incident and makes up a happy childhood “memory” involving cotton candy. She might regret that unsavory connection when he later buys a cotton candy machine in another attempt to please her, awkward!
The middle of the movie takes an extended detour to focus on the man from the opening flash forward. He is the bodyguard of a criminal boss who the assassin kills (with a spectacular head squib!). After the shooting, the bodyguard immediately takes note of which criminals are leaving in a suspiciously calm and quick manner, and he sees a falling branch giving away the shooter's position. He and a bunch of other thugs go running after the assassin into traffic. One of the guys gets nailed by a car, and I thought “You don’t usually see that happen in movies.” Then as the chase progresses, EVERY other guy except the bodyguard gets hit by oncoming traffic, evoking a “Holy shit!” from my wife and me as it just kept going.
The bodyguard’s floppy hair made me assume at first he would be some flamboyant young hotshot or foppish asshole, but he turns out to just be a smart, dedicated dude. The floppy hair gives him something to stare out from under with a pissed off look as various people tell him he can’t take revenge for his boss (he follows the assassin from Seoul to Hong Kong, no longer his turf). He eventually finds the handler and makes her set up a trap. The handler tells the assassin this will be enough money for them to retire, and the assassin hopes to permanently assume her next fake identity (even taking “her” childhood photo to show Long Shek as she finally gives him a name to call her). Even if you haven’t seen a Hong Kong movie before, it is obvious things are about to get real bad.
The assassin comes clean and tells Long Shek everything, and he still wants to accept her. Hearing and seeing are two different things though, as soon after she coldly kills a neighborhood thug Long Shek knew and it finally gives him pause. No time to think, though, because the bodyguard and the local gang are there to fight the assassin and each other! Long Shek tries to run back and help, but the assassin shoots him in the leg to try and save him. The poor, dumb bastard keeps going. An orgy of low speed car crashes and gunfire ensues, as we finally return to the scene that opened the movie. Long Shek picks up the assassin in a car, and they get shot up more than Bonnie and Clyde. Pouring blood, he insists they can still escape, desperately trying to smash through the surrounding cars. The camera pulls out above the battered mass of cars and the bodyguard uses his last bullet on himself.
Now THAT is how you do a fatalistic romance! The script and lead performances here created interesting characters and a compelling romance angle. Bullets of Love had a bigger initial hurdle for its similar “romance” (the man is a happily engaged cop and the assassin kills his fiance) and never did the work to make us understand or care about the assassin character before giving her a soft redemption at the end. Beyond Hypothermia puts way more work into establishing its assassin, but it never loses sight of who she is (even forcing Long Shek to catch up with the audience when his acquaintance is killed). There are also little ways she tries to make herself more human, like taking polaroids of herself (then burning them for safety), or latching onto the materials that come with a new fake identity.
The body temperature gimmick feels very anime/manga-esque, but it doesn’t really come up much outside of symbolizing the protagonist’s emotional state and giving some theming to her kills (most of her weapons come out of ice blocks). Other than that quirk, the movie stays relatively grounded, even in its action scenes (compared to other HK flicks, at least). That reminds me of some later Johnnie To films I have seen, where there are not a lot of action scenes but they stand out due to smart staging and stylish direction. The messy chaos of street shootouts and twisted metal, or a dozen dudes getting wrecked by oncoming traffic.
Considering the body temperature thing falls by the wayside for much of the movie, THIS should have been called Bullets of Love. When she shoots Long Shek to stop him running after her, trying to save him, that is a LITERAL bullet of love, goddammit!
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